“John from Cincinnati’s” man behind the viral vid curtain

HBO’s “John From Cincinnati” wraps its bizarro 10-episode run on Sunday, but the show’s devotees will still be able to feast in the coming weeks on fresh viral Internet video connected to the show and its weird cast of characters.

Just as the series has taken absurdist storytelling to new heights for mainstream TV, so too did co-creator/executive producer David Milch set out to harness the “long tail” functionality of the Internet to extend the “JFC” saga in original, mysterious ways (the only way Milch likes to work these days, apparently.)

The man behind the curtain of all the Internet vids that have trickled out on the Web since shortly before the show bowed in June has been Marc Ostrick, a distant relative of Milch’s who was brought on in the pre-production stage and encouraged to run free with his DV and Super 8 cameras. As the John Monad character keeps observing, “the Internet is big.” And a filmmaker couldn’t ask for a more vibrant setting than the border beach town of Imperial Beach, Calif., and its fertile surf culture.

(Ostrick is pictured above on location in Imperial Beach with two colorful grapplers who briefly but memorably made their way into an early “JFC” seg.)

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HBO’s “John From Cincinnati” wraps its bizarro 10-episode run on Sunday, but the show’s devotees will still be able to feast in the coming weeks on fresh viral Internet video connected to the show and its weird cast of characters. Just as the series has taken absurdist storytelling to new heights for mainstream TV, so […]

HBO’s “John From Cincinnati” wraps its bizarro 10-episode run on Sunday, but the show’s devotees will still be able to feast in the coming weeks on fresh viral Internet video connected to the show and its weird cast of characters. Just as the series has taken absurdist storytelling to new heights for mainstream TV, so […]

HBO’s “John From Cincinnati” wraps its bizarro 10-episode run on Sunday, but the show’s devotees will still be able to feast in the coming weeks on fresh viral Internet video connected to the show and its weird cast of characters. Just as the series has taken absurdist storytelling to new heights for mainstream TV, so […]

HBO’s “John From Cincinnati” wraps its bizarro 10-episode run on Sunday, but the show’s devotees will still be able to feast in the coming weeks on fresh viral Internet video connected to the show and its weird cast of characters. Just as the series has taken absurdist storytelling to new heights for mainstream TV, so […]

HBO’s “John From Cincinnati” wraps its bizarro 10-episode run on Sunday, but the show’s devotees will still be able to feast in the coming weeks on fresh viral Internet video connected to the show and its weird cast of characters. Just as the series has taken absurdist storytelling to new heights for mainstream TV, so […]

HBO’s “John From Cincinnati” wraps its bizarro 10-episode run on Sunday, but the show’s devotees will still be able to feast in the coming weeks on fresh viral Internet video connected to the show and its weird cast of characters. Just as the series has taken absurdist storytelling to new heights for mainstream TV, so […]

HBO’s “John From Cincinnati” wraps its bizarro 10-episode run on Sunday, but the show’s devotees will still be able to feast in the coming weeks on fresh viral Internet video connected to the show and its weird cast of characters. Just as the series has taken absurdist storytelling to new heights for mainstream TV, so […]